Isolato
by Albino Shadowz
Summary: Yami no Bakura finds himself trapped in the Shadow Realm once more, a world in which deteriorated souls cannibalize each other in order to survive. Bakura has never had trouble before, but this time around he's got a problem. Namely, his host. Gen darkfic. **formerly 'Monstrous Shadows', being rewritten**
1. Unwelcoming

**_I. Unwelcoming_**

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**Decided to give this a facelift. Loooots of new content in addition to editing; heck, this first chapter is double the original length. Therefore I think it's worth the reread if you have in fact read it before. ^_^**

**Thank you to TheeWiccaChick, The Bride of constant Vigil, A Fan, CryingMarionette, DarkspiritYami, MyChemicalDarkness, Darth Mudkip, Crystia/darkelf777, YamiBakura1988, fan of this fic, nathanel . meece, Moonlight Serenity, Christina Bakura, Seto K4iba1, as well as anonymous Guest reviewers for reviewing the old version.**

**Gore, vore, cursing, violence, death, and my own special brand of morbid await you.**

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Losing portions of one's body to the darkness. A suitable punishment.

One that Yami Bakura mentally stored away for future penalty games. Not as painful as he would have liked, but he could integrate that into his own design.

He felt some level of begrudging admiration for the psychopath he fought if only because of his sadistic creativity, almost preferring Marik's childish dark side to the teenager lecturing him on his dueling skills. But there was an Item at stake. Sacrifices had to be made.

Hell, Bakura organized his strategy primarily around self-destructive cards; many, _many _things were sacrificed.

The final sacrifice he ended up making wasn't one he planned on: himself.

Actually, that was not entirely correct. His spirit remained scattered all about like broken bits of glass, some in the Ring, a little in the Puzzle, and a portion embedded in his host. Ryou Bakura's body was the one that the shadows slowly devoured, not the body of the spirit of the Ring—the mortal flesh he first occupied became rancid and disintegrated into little more than dust long, long ago.

Perhaps the initial loss of pieces of his limbs and torso to the attacks of Yami Marik's monsters and his own sacrifices did not cause as much pain as his sadomasochistic personality would have liked. But Ra's fire? _That _hurt a hell of a lot more. And so he exempted himself from shame for screaming with the same intensity as Marik at the initial flare that engulfed them.

Even his host, deep in pain-induced slumber as he was, jolted from within his soul room at the burning sting that coursed through both of their respective souls. Bakura smothered his consciousness to force Ryou back to sleep as he usually did upon possessing him. The last thing he needed was his landlord awakening and getting himself slaughtered.

Bakura thought of the body as his own, at least in those last few moments while his Life Points clocked out. Along with Marik he felt his host's soul being dragged into the darkness with him and remembered too late that in this particular trip to Hell he would have another companion.

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The Shadow Realm.

Colder, danker, and murkier than anywhere one could find in the mortal world. Aptly named, too. Shadow creatures roved all about, lumbering, skulking, and, more often than not, crawling in and out of sight. Violet fog carried the scent of rot and death centuries old. Not that any of the shadow creatures would be able to smell it, but the new arrivals felt it tingle like frost in the back of their throats.

Would the monsters have cared if they could have detected the filthy air? Most likely not. Their senses had disappeared as soon as their spirits had finally succumbed and they were turned into the formless things that they had always seen in the other world but had never truly acknowledged: shadows. And it wasn't just their senses that melted away; whatever memory they had of the world before the darkness vanished.

Human minds descended into survival mode. Slaughtering one another and proceeding to devour their fellows happened on regular occurrence, adding more half-melted spirit gore gathered in gouts across the 'floor' until in some places one had to drag their feet through it like a swamp of putrid flesh.

Every once in a while a new spirit arrived in the Realm. Shadow creatures gathered around him or her as if welcoming a newborn child. Or assembling around the dinner table. One or the other.

On a fateful night (…or maybe day? Hard to tell, really) two spirits slipped into the dark world together and lay prone next to each other, unconscious and blissfully unaware of just where they were. For the moment, anyway. Each could barely be seen beneath the layer of shifting purple fog if not for the prominent white hair and pale skin they each possessed.

The misshapen monsters stared at the two figures that were the newest additions to the haze with half-formed eyes, some of them not even registering that there was anything there at all but continuing to drag themselves aimlessly around in the gloom.

Finally, after what could have been an eternity and what could have been a mere minute, one of them half-walked half-limped up to one of the human spirits and—he? She? It didn't matter—prodded at it with something that at one point might have been a limb but now resembled nothing short of a tentacle. The purple-black appendage dripped with the ectoplasm of its last meal, as did the tongue hanging halfway out of its mouth in anticipation of its next one.

The figure's face twitched and crumpled into the start of a scowl. Not that the annoyed expression meant anything to the shadow creature. It just felt intrigued that the spirit had moved at all.

Poke, poke went the oozing, deformed appendage at the pale face.

If the shadow creature expected a strong reaction, it got one.

Slender fingers clamped down on the tentacle of darkness and tore it off of the shadow creature's body as easily as it could rip paper. The grotesque thing screamed and stumbled back as the soul it made the mistake of provoking opened wine-red eyes and snarled in a carnal way that by and large only the shadow creatures that had completely lost their minds would make. It was not a suitable sound for a human spirit, much less one that had just arrived in the Shadow Realm.

But Yami Bakura was not exactly human, now was he?

The incorporeal form made his way to his feet with the dismembered piece of the shadow still clenched in one hand. A large number of the shadow creatures that had circled around the pair of spirits dispersed when Bakura so much as looked at them, but the one that had been robbed of its arm stood firm.

The red-eyed spirit noticed and sneered. He lifted up the dismembered shadow tentacle to his mouth and took a vast bite out of the side of it. There was a meaty crunch and a gray substance that smelled of old human blood oozed out of the sides of Bakura's mouth. Without bothering to chew he swallowed the hunk of slick meat with a gulp before flinging the remains of the appendage towards the shadow creature. It fell into the ground layer of fog, making a _splat _as if he'd just thrown a blob of gelatin.

"That tasted like absolute shit," Bakura said, wiping the slime from his chin with the back of his wrist, "but that's not going to stop me from eating you alive if you so much as _look_ in my direction again. Understand?"

The shadow creature made a movement that may or may have not been a nod, and Bakura seemed to accept it. He turned away in favor of concentrating on the limp form of his host's spirit. Another beast roughly the size of a baseball, tiny by the Shadow Realm's standards, decided to crawl on top of Ryou's back and tugged at a lock of white hair with some interest. It nibbled on a piece.

Before the shadow creature could so much as blink the Spirit of the Ring gave it kick that sent it tumbling into the deeper darkness.

Bakura kneeled by Ryou and roughly flipped him over. The Millennium Ring did not hang from his host's neck, and after a glance at himself the spirit confirmed that he didn't have it either. To some extent this should cause him alarm. Survival and escape from the Pharaoh's penalty game after the Monster World RPG and later the Card Graveyard had depended in part on the false copy of the Ring that he had. For all he knew the fake could be buried somewhere beneath the goop at his feet.

"Landlord! Host! Wake up!" He snapped his fingers in front of Ryou's face, to no effect.

Bakura made an irritated noise in the back of his throat and grabbed his host's shoulders before shaking him with about as much care as one would give someone they wanted to strangle to death. "_Host."_

His host slept in his soul room all of the time. Why did he feel the need to _now _with ravenous shadow creatures all around them?

When Bakura reached his boiling point he smacked Ryou across the face. A red imprint of his hand and his host's head rolling to one side were the only rewards he got for his efforts.

He cursed and threw Ryou to the ground where his pale form sprawled, doll-like, amidst the darkness, half of his face landing with an abhorrent sound in the goop that was the remains of a shadow creature. Suddenly Bakura became aware of the hungry gazes on his back once more.

He turned partially to glower at the shadow creatures and snap, "What are you looking at?"

One of the few creatures graced with the gift of keeping one of its eyeballs rolled its gaze to Ryou and blinked rapidly.

"No," Bakura said flatly and shifted his body to crouch over his host much in the same way an animal protects its kill. "This one is _mine._"

The shadow creatures didn't pose any threat in that moment, but that didn't stop Bakura from baring his canines and snarling with beastly passion.

"He's _mine, _you hear me? _Mine._ If anyoneis going to make a meal out of this soul, it's going to be _me._"

Speaking of which…

He put a slender hand over his abdomen, massaging it idly. The overwhelming appetite that always assaulted him upon entering the Realm had begun anew, his stomach rumbling as the juices started flowing with more frenzy in expectance of more sustenance. The bite of tentacle, large as it was, did little to fill him up and was already completely assimilated in the pool of acid. Every bit of energy from the rancid thing had gone to his spirit, but it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. Bakura wanted—no, _needed_ a bigger feed.

His gaze went to Ryou, saliva pooling across his tongue. The boy's spirit was frail, sure, but he would take the edge off of Bakura's hunger. He raked his gaze over the prone body, already planning how to properly enjoy consuming the richness of his pure soul.

Luckily for Ryou and unluckily for the closest shadow creature, Bakura thought better of it.

A few of the shadow creatures remained, either too blind or too stupid to realize they were in the midst of a predatory soul made from the darkness itself.

The closest happened to be rather small, only just barely able to fill up his hand. Truly sad, really, that a human would be reduced to something even more pathetic. It cried out as he snatched it up, twisting from side to side in an effort to break free. The cry grew even louder once it saw him opening his hungry maw.

He popped the soul headfirst into his mouth with all the care of a mortal child eating a cookie. The creature squealed in pain as he masticated it to a thick pulp, grinding up what remained of its spiritual innards and bones. It wriggled at first in an effort to escape his jaws, but all too quickly it had nothing left to move. The taste was foul, something akin to a mixture of dust and rotten flesh. A small price to pay in order to fill the void in his midsection.

Bakura forced the slimy remains to the back of his throat with his tongue and with a hard gulp it disappeared down into his esophagus. He wiped the leftover ectoplasm from his lips with a swipe of his fingertips as his snack arrived in his stomach, its mushy form twitching feebly. The hot walls, slick with acid, closed happily over the nourishment and began to digest the shadow creature in an instant.

His dark soul grew a little stronger, whatever humanity remained within him growing a great deal fainter as the energy was forcibly squeezed out of the shadow creature to add to his own. Bakura rubbed his belly in satisfaction, only to have it rumble hungrily beneath his touch, begging for more. Without a second thought he reached for another creature to further satisfy his appetite.

The ravenous spirit devoured four before Ryou began to awaken.

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**Depending on time (something I wish I had more of), motivation, and whether or not anyone is still interested in reading this thing, I may revamp and upload the other chapters as well as new content. :')**

**Reviews are loved. **

**~Albino Shadowz**


	2. Sufferer

**_II. Sufferer_**

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**Thanks to Seto K4iba1, Mistress-DNL, and Yami-HikariAkira for reviewing the previous chapter. *throws cookies***

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At some point, Ryou Bakura became almost used to blacking out.

Just after the beginning of Battle City those sickeningly familiar feelings started again. He sensed the spirit's presence become even stronger than usual until he smothered Ryou's out as easily as a snuffed candle. The chill went to all of the host's limbs and his senses went numb. Finally his vision blotted out into nothingness and he found himself sprawled haphazardly on the mattress in his soul room.

The moment he realized just where he had been imprisoned—in his own _mind_—Ryou descended into a mixture of rage and panic.

He punched and kicked and eventually clawed at the panels of his soul room door like an animal until his fingers bled and he leaned his forehead against the wood, barely fighting back the urge to scream.

Then he screamed anyway.

Eventually the spirit grew irritated with his fighting and cast a spell that put him into a deep, dreamless sleep, much like the comas that his soulless victims went into. He saw his host's insubordination towards him as an annoyance to be dealt with and then ignored, nothing more.

Flash forward to what could have been days later or what could have been a couple of hours—time did not matter when one resided in their soul room—and Ryou found thrown himself back in control of his body, minus an unknown percentage of blood and with a large wound in his left arm added. Unthinkingly Ryou clutched at the bandages, causing some of the stitches beneath the protection of blood soaked gauze to snap. The flesh came apart an instant later, along with a sickening gush of blood. A sudden fit of dizziness overcame Ryou, everything melting into blurred color as the pain registered in his mind. He dropped to his knees, causing his kneecaps to slam against frigid metal and his torso to double over.

"M-my arm…" he mumbled near-unintelligibly, squeezing a bit tighter in a futile attempt to stop the flow of blood while avoiding breaking the stitches further. "It… hurts…"

Ryou bowed his head and shut his eyes tightly before he blinked them open again in an attempt to try to figure out where he was. Everything appeared a blurry mess, but he could make out Yugi and what looked almost like a dragon. An _enormous _dragon.

After what felt like a despairingly long amount of time Ryou asked something in a tone that sounded weak even to his own ears, but no one answered. Finally he gave up on attempts at communication and resigned to trying to regain the breath that seemed to be completely gone from his body and trying to figure out why such a harsh wind blew at him.

Wouldn't you know it; he lost consciousness again only seconds later, soul falling into a deliciously dead abyss where he could no longer feel. At first Ryou thought that he had fainted from blood loss, but the sight of his soul room proved that theory wrong.

Why had the spirit given him those few minutes, that small scrap of control?

He mulled it over for some time, but eventually came to the conclusion that he would never know and that it did not matter. Maybe all a hallucination conjured by his imagination. Or the spirit's.

Ryou did not know of the deal made between the spirit of the Ring and Marik Ishtar, and he certainly did not know about the latter's dark side.

The host of the spirit of the Ring stayed in the dark both literally and figuratively for quite some time. Maybe he should not have felt surprised when he fell asleep against the bloodied door of his soul room and woke up in the bowels of the Shadow Realm.

Heavy, gummy lids cracked open with excruciating slowness. Ryou propped himself up on his elbows and with some difficulty lifted his head, feeling as though someone replaced his brain with cotton. He looked at the violet haze, taking note of the large, misshapen blobs of darkness that seemed to be looking back at him, but not wanting to put any of his remaining energy into caring.

"So this is the place…" he murmured.

The place where games of darkness were conducted and souls of those who lost were damned.

Ryou took in the fact that he now sat in the Shadow Realm rather calmly. He stood up, only slightly disconcerted when his shoes sank into the ground with a wet _squish._

For reasons he could not quite explain even to himself he put a hand to his wounded arm. Instead of the blood he expected, a different substance seeped from the bandages: a thick, grayish sort of goo.

He did not have too much time to consider the abnormality before he caught sight of the spirit of the Ring. Ryou had only ever truly seen him once before, during the Monster World RPG against his friends. The sharp, aggressive appearance had not changed all that much. A new addition was the look of carnal hunger on his face.

The spirit sat about a foot or so away and eating… _something. _Bakura sank his teeth as deeply as he could into the slick skin—skin? Was it really? Or did it deserve to be called such anymore?—and ripped off a mouthful that threatened to slip out from between his lips. Some gray substance wound up escaping anyway, sliding in streams from the corners.

The… whatever it was… squirmed almost pitifully from where its imprisonment in Bakura's slender white fingers. It may have been larger at one point, but now only about a third of the size of the spirit devouring it. The thing let out a squeal as Bakura ripped off another portion of its body and continued to wail as he ate with loud, meaty crunches.

After he had chewed the mouthful to his satisfaction, Bakura's cheeks were bloated in a way that might have been comical had it not been so disgusting. They did not remain that way for long, though, as he tipped his head back and swallowed. A revoltingly large bulge made its way down his throat with a little bit of help from Bakura pressing his fingers to the obstruction and a few more swallows. For a moment it stayed in one place, hovering just above his collarbone. With a hard gulp he got it down and his stomach grew even more rotund.

Bakura lowered his head with a cross between a growl and a sigh of satisfaction and continued to caress his neck. After a long moment the spirit glanced at his host and grinned. The mixture of saliva and, unknown to Ryou, ectoplasm, dripped in slow but steady rivers off of his teeth.

Bakura gestured with the wriggling mass that he had clenched in his hands. "Want some?"

Ryou stared at the thing and it stared back with something that vaguely resembled an eyeball. It let out a weak mewl that might have been genuine or could very well have been a well-practiced ruse for all he knew.

"Do you want to eat or not? And after all of the griping about being _so_ _hungry _every second of the day."

"I… you want me to eat that..?" Ryou asked dazedly.

The sight of the poor thing and the thought of having it alive and writhing in his stomach made him nauseous.

"It tried to eat you not a minute ago," he said idly and poked at one of the areas that he had taken a bite with one of his fingers. "What with that tasty smelling gash on your arm, I cannot blame it."

The thing shrieked as the poking progressed and Ryou winced. He bit his lip as he gazed at the frantic little eye the same color of a fresh bruise that darted from him to Bakura.

Finally it registered what Bakura had said. "It… tried to eat me?"

The spirit sneered. "Human spirits are delicacies, landlord. You can hardly blame a shadow creature for wanting a bite."

Ryou felt an icy finger touch his spine. Bakura sounded as if he spoke from experience.

"Fine, if you want to be a squeamish little bitch, you can just starve," Bakura's irritated voice cut into his thoughts and Ryou redirected his attention to him just long enough to see him stuff the writhing creature into his mouth as if handling a large piece of meat.

The teen felt the sense of nausea overcome him again as his ears were filled with the sound of Bakura making strangled gulping noises as he tried to swallow the entirety of it whole and the high-pitched shrieks of the shadow creature as he consumed it.

Ryou shut his eyes and covered his mouth. The sounds of Bakura finishing off his meal still made its way to his ears, but the shadow creature had gone silent.

Eventually, after hearing a groan of contentment, Ryou felt a skeletal hand on his shoulder and jumped when he opened his eyes to the sight of Bakura's face inches away from his. He cringed at the combination of the close proximity and with the hot, reeking breath coursing over his face a moment later, deeply contrasting with the chilly air of the Shadow Realm.

"The shadow creatures are no substitute for the delectable taste of a human's soul. But they shall keep me satiated," he licked his lips, "For now, anyway."

Ryou turned his head away from Bakura and tried to concentrate on some point out on the horizon, only to find that the only thing that there to look at consisted of the foul haze and some shadow creatures peering out from where they were hiding.

"If you think human souls are so… 'delectable'... why not eat me instead of a shadow creature? Especially when I was just unconscious?"

Bakura blinked, then recovered his smug expression and snickered.

"Your words wound me. Why can't you accept that I do some things out of the kindness of my heart?"

"What heart?" Ryou muttered under his breath.

Bakura's smile twitched like a taut string about to snap. "Careful, or I may change my mind and eat yours out for dessert."

Ryou slanted his gaze away and unconsciously began to nibble on his lower lip again. Did spirits have hearts? Did that shadow creature have a heart..? It had not looked as though anything substantial at all made it up… just a bunch of mush held together by skin. Had his insides turned to mush, too?

Apparently Bakura did not feel in the mood to carry out his threat, because he leaned away from Ryou to lie on his back in the foul gunge that covered the floor. The blue and white striped shirt he wore rode up slightly to make way for the noticeable swell in his pale abdomen where his meal resided.

In the newfound position he belched indulgently, expelling the air from within his stomach and further entrapping the creatures. There were in fact many of them, as far as Ryou could tell. He refused to believe that one alone could take up so much space. Bakura splayed a hand against his stomach, shutting his eyes and groaning softly. He smeared the slime remaining on his hand from his feeding across his ashen white skin, giving it sick sort of gloss.

At first Ryou almost had to fight down a laugh at the sight, but then the full belly moved. A lot. The laugh died in Ryou's throat as he reminded himself of a snake swallowing its prey alive. But snakes gulped down their prey all at once; they did not take a bunch of bites beforehand.

Bakura slapped his bloated gut in order to subdue the writhing shadow creatures and turned his head to leer at the others in the gloom. Even those that were paying attention had little to no reaction to the fact that many of their kind were imprisoned and being digested within the apparently still-sentient spirit. He rolled his eyes before redirecting his attention to his host.

"So," Bakura rubbed the curve of his stomach with one hand and pushed down on one of the many spots where a shadow creature struggled. "I don't suppose you know what happened to the Ring, do you?"

"The Millennium Ring?"

"No, your mum's wedding ring. Yes, the Millennium Ring!"

Ryou shook his head and said with a tinge of bitterness in his voice, "How should I know? I haven't even had control of my body for… I don't even know how long."

"Aw, poor little landlord hasn't had control of his body for only a week—"

"A week? What have you been doing for all that time?"

Bakura continued as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. "—so he thinks that he's got it bad enough to bitch to me about it despite the fact that I've been through much worse."

Ryou threw his hands up and let out an uncharacteristically derisive laugh. "Worse? What could be worse than having _you _taking over my body at random intervals?"

"How about being stuck in a piece of jewelry for the course of a few millennia?" Bakura snarled back, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the throaty groan he produced directly after the fact when a shadow creature moved too violently.

"If you hated it so much, why do you want to find the Ring?"

"My powers, fool. Not to mention the fact that I want to get out of this hellhole."

Ryou looked at Bakura's overfed gut. "You seem to be doing fine."

"Heh. Even I don't have the appetite to stomach that much," Bakura said and tilted his head to indicate the various shadow creatures that seemed to be a little closer than they were before. "And there are more and more of them each day."

Ryou gave him a questioning look, to which Bakura finally got to his feet to stand in his rightful place looming a good few inches above his host. Ryou refused to give him the satisfaction of tilting his head up, so he stared grimly at the spirit's neck—at least it was better than glancing down and seeing the freakish movements of Bakura's meal. He swore he could hear the acids within the spirit bubbling and churning like a cauldron.

"Don't you ever wonder what happens to the souls that are sent here? That _I _often send here when I wear your flesh as my own?"

Ryou did not say anything, but glanced at the shadow creatures out of the corner of his eye, the taste of bile welling up in his throat again with a feeling of sickness overcoming him again like a bad dream. "You're saying that… they..?"

"Their identities, their thoughts, their spiritual forms, they all putrefy and become rancid, decayed blobs of wasted soul energy. They're just food for each other. And, temporarily," Bakura twined an arm around Ryou's waist, and pulled him closer to him in an almost-hug so that he could lean down and hiss, "For us, my dear host."

Ryou could feel the struggles of Bakura's prey against the chamber of his belly against his own bony hip. He glowered at the spirit despite the cold barb of fear and disgust that had worked its way in between his ribs and into his heart. "Let go of me."

Bakura snickered, then, to Ryou's disbelief, released him before giving him a slight push.

"Don't look so suspicious. I'm curious to see what you plan on doing." Bakura folded his arms and narrowed his eyes, the cold smirk still firmly fixed on his face.

Ryou inhaled and exhaled a deep breath before he took a moment to examine the darkness in front of him thoroughly, as though if he looked at it for long enough a path would eventually be revealed to him. It did not, of course, so he just decided to start walking.

In spite of himself he looked over his shoulder at Bakura. The spirit still stood with all of the same smugness as he had before, but a moment after Ryou glanced at him the smile on his face faltered. Ryou barely had time to register it before he felt something slimy and icy cold grabbed his ankle.

"Is someone—" A hacking, wheezing cough cut the question off. "…s-someone there?"

Ryou choked back a scream as another hand scrabbled for his other ankle, though thing did not exactly resemble much of a hand anymore. The fingers looked as if they had been completely bitten off with nothing but ugly, marred wounds oozing grayish goop to show that they had ever even existed. Despite this, he could swear that he felt bone brush his leg at some point.

Ryou took a step back out of pure instinct, only to lose his balance and fall unceremoniously on his backside. The ground gave way easily beneath him.

Something jumped on top of him within seconds and that time around he could not hold back a sharp cry as he caught sight of what remained of a face leaning close to scrutinize his own.

The close proximity gave him a lungful of the gut-wrenching smell of rot. If he were to stop to think about it during those few tense seconds, he might have realized that it came from the many ghastly wounds that the not-a-person but most-definitely-not-a-shadow-creature had sustained on its forehead and jaw.

The most prominent consisted of a nasty cut on its temple, causing messy blonde bangs to become stuck to the gray substance that oozed out of the wound in torrents. More than a little dribbled onto the captive, splattering like gobs of spit. Ryou barely noticed. He found himself too distracted by the area around the broken skin where it appeared to be morphing into the same sort of substance that the shadow creatures were made of. It did not appear the same color as what appeared to be relatively healthy tanned skin around it; instead it looked a little bit like a mesh of something a little gray and a little purple and a little green.

It possessed another laceration around its stomach area, Ryou was quick to realize. What felt like gallons of the thing's 'blood' and what may or may not have been substantial and whole enough to be organs were spilling onto Ryou's lap through the wound as easily as a yolk slipped out of a sizeable crack in an eggshell. The ectoplasm soaked through his shirt and he felt as though he could drown in the icy cold slime.

Ryou shuddered as he stared at a pair of pale violet eyes, the same shade as the haze that permeated that world, one partially squinted closed as a result of the ooze from the cut on its—no, _his, _Ryou realized with something that was not quite strong enough to be relief—forehead, causing him to have an asymmetrical gaze.

"Bakura..?" the eyes blinked with something like recognition, and then just as rapidly narrowed. "No, you're—"

The person interrupted himself with another gut-wrenching cough, hacking up an unknown substance that splashed onto Ryou's cheek to make an addition to the other goop that had collected there. Ryou cringed and attempted to struggle, but even with the masticated hand the other easily kept him pinned.

As he wrestled in vain to get free he wondered exactly when the spirit of the Ring planned on helping him.

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**Second chapter finished. *collapses in happiness***

**Review or I might decide to make Bakura's bloated belly explode. :D**

**~Albino Shadowz**


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